Honors Project 3: “A White Heron” and “The Open Boat”
Honors Project 3: “A White Heron” and “The Open Boat” Read the stories, and complete the online lesson. Then answer these questions, using examples from the stories…
Honors Project 3: “A White Heron” and “The Open Boat”
Read the stories, and complete the online lesson. Then answer these questions, using examples from the stories to support your answers. Turn this assignment in to your teacher by the due date for full credit.
(Score for Question 2: _ of 20 points) What qualities does Sarah Orne Jewett attribute to rural New England and its people in “A White Heron”? Do you think readers who hailed from this part of the country when the story was published in 1886 would have appreciated or agreed with Jewett’s depiction of themselves and their region? Why or why not? Use examples from the story in support of your response. Answer: Type your answer here. (Score for Question 3: of 20 points)
Consider Stephen Crane’s story “The Open Boat.” Describe and explain the feelings that the men in the boat have toward nature, fate, and their fellow human beings as they are able to make their way close to land but are unable to reach it and the safety it offers. Cite specific examples and details from the text in your response.
Answer:
Type your answer here.
(Score for Question 4: __ of 30 points)
In “The Open Boat,” Stephen Crane includes the following passage as the likelihood of the men surviving their ordeal continues to diminish:
When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers.
Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying: “Yes, but I love myself.”
What is Crane saying in this passage? How can this passage be understood as an expression of some of the primary tenets of naturalism?
Answer:
Type your answer here.
Honors Project 3: “A White Heron” And “The Open Boat”
What qualities does Sarah Orne Jewett attribute to rural New England and its people in “A White Heron”? Do you think readers who hailed from this part of the country when the story was published in 1886 would have appreciated or agreed with Jewett’s depiction of themselves and their region? Why or why not? Use examples from the story in support of your response.
Answer
Jewett narrates the story by attributing Silvia’s life in the manufacturing town, which is majorly how New England looks but then moves to the countryside region, which is similar to New England’s rural areas. I think the story’s readers from New England could not have cherished how the narrator depicted their region during that period. However, it could have enabled them to realize the way in which they were much centralized concerning industry instead of appreciating nature. If they failed to come to have such thoughts, they could have thought of Jewett being offensive and harsh to them. For example, in Sylvia’s case, it seemed like she only became alive when she went to live on the farm, which directly implies that individuals in the city do not enjoy living.
Consider Stephen Crane’s story “The Open Boat.” Describe and explain the feelings that the men in the boat have toward nature, fate, and their fellow human beings as they are able to make their way close to land but are unable to reach it and the safety it offers. Cite specific examples and details from the text in your response.
Answer
Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat” can be described as a fiction story of Crane’s traumatic life. The ship Crane rode had sunk off at the Florida coast when he found himself among the four men struggling in the tiny open boat. Everything seems to be controlled by destiny. The individual’s fate is determined by some forces which were beyond their control. The story begins by describing the men who did not look up hence did not know what color the sky was. They were focused on the unsafe, choppy waters. In the end, when they reach their safety, it is only then that they feel free to be the “interpreters.” (chapter 7, 237). These men in the boat believe in something greater than them that they have no control over; hence their feeling towards fate, nature, and other people was that they are all objects of some forces which they do not have control over. They could only interpret the occurrences they experienced rather than change and control what would happen.
In “The Open Boat,” Stephen Crane includes the following passage as the likelihood of the men surviving their ordeal continues to diminish:
When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers.
Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying: “Yes, but I love myself.
What is Crane saying in this passage? How can this passage be understood as an expression of some of the primary tenets of naturalism?
Answer
The passage outlines that nature is incredibly powerful. Crane realizes that he had no control over what would happen to him. The anger he had propelled him into fending off nature through being violent. However, he stops such thoughts when he realizes that he had no power over nature and no chance of winning. He then starts begging for mercy as his last resort as he had nothing else he could do. The passage shows that, at times, words may be more persuasive compared to actions.